Election Countdown 2012: Protesters Chain Themselves to Revolving Doors at a State Office Building to Stop Fracking in North Carolina, and More

Today in the Election Countdown: Protesters chain themselves to revolving doors at a state office building to stop fracking in North Carolina; there is a slow leak in the oldest double-shell waste tank at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington that’s allowing highly radioactive waste to leak into the space between the inner and outer shells; former Wisconsin state senator Randy Hopper, was arrested on drunken driving, domestic abuse, trespassing and misue of telephone charges; and more.

Mission elapsed time: T + 45 and counting*

The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. ― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

Obama vs. Romney Round III.Recently, I’ve started taking the bus into town, so I can caffeinate myself and work on my laptop in a milieu that could make me feel like I lived in a city again, if I were able to suspend disbelief, which I can’t.

Point being that I take the last bus home, and the last bus here, like last buses everywhere, is filled with characters. A selection of characters I’m highly confident is drawn from populations that are under this or that form of supervison. Most exhibit detailed knowledge of pharmaceuticals, especially barbiturates. Their language is technical and official. They are expert in brands, dosages, arrests, trials, hearings, sentences, and treatment regimens. They trade tips. Most present well; they speak fluently and often, especially of compliance, recovery, and the disasters of others.

And heaven knows what they do when they get home.

So, tonight, listening to our affectless, sweating, droning candidates speak so fluently and present so well, I couldn’t but be reminded of junkies on the last bus. Because it really is about the next fix with these guys, isn’t it? It always is, with junk. Oil, money, power: Junk. Right in the imperial vein.

Anyhow, I’ll aggregate reactions tomorrow. I gave the debate to Obama on points. Then again, Romney might have passed “the commander-in-chief test” for the tiny fraction of the voting population in the swing counties of swing states that hasn’t made up its collective mind. So Obama could win tonight’s debate on points and lose November’s election on votes. The Onion gets it right, as usual. Snippets will be abbreviated tonight, as I attempt to sleep without waking up screaming.

Walmart. Union: “Twenty-one individuals named in the suit [suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Chicago] allege that from early 2009 and continuing through today, Wal-Mart, Brookfield, Wis.-based QPS Employment Group Inc. and Labor Ready Midwest Inc., a division of Tacoma, Wash.-based True Blue Inc., failed to keep accurate records of workers’ time and provide workers with forms verifying hours worked, thereby making it ‘impossible for workers to make claims that they were not paid by the temp agencies for all of the hours they worked.’”

AK. Koch Brothers: “The [benefit] was to raise money to buy access to a new database sold by the reactionary Koch Brothers. The database actually marries church records and Internet shopping histories to better target voters likely to oppose — in the present case — the Alaska Senate Bipartisan Working Group. Minnery explained that this little invasion of privacy was for “the Glory of God and to get conservatives in power.”"

Election Countdown 2012: Protesters Chain Themselves to Revolving Doors at a State Office Building to Stop Fracking in North Carolina, and More

Today in the Election Countdown: Protesters chain themselves to revolving doors at a state office building to stop fracking in North Carolina; there is a slow leak in the oldest double-shell waste tank at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington that’s allowing highly radioactive waste to leak into the space between the inner and outer shells; former Wisconsin state senator Randy Hopper, was arrested on drunken driving, domestic abuse, trespassing and misue of telephone charges; and more.

Mission elapsed time: T + 45 and counting*

The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. ― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

Obama vs. Romney Round III.Recently, I’ve started taking the bus into town, so I can caffeinate myself and work on my laptop in a milieu that could make me feel like I lived in a city again, if I were able to suspend disbelief, which I can’t.

Point being that I take the last bus home, and the last bus here, like last buses everywhere, is filled with characters. A selection of characters I’m highly confident is drawn from populations that are under this or that form of supervison. Most exhibit detailed knowledge of pharmaceuticals, especially barbiturates. Their language is technical and official. They are expert in brands, dosages, arrests, trials, hearings, sentences, and treatment regimens. They trade tips. Most present well; they speak fluently and often, especially of compliance, recovery, and the disasters of others.

And heaven knows what they do when they get home.

So, tonight, listening to our affectless, sweating, droning candidates speak so fluently and present so well, I couldn’t but be reminded of junkies on the last bus. Because it really is about the next fix with these guys, isn’t it? It always is, with junk. Oil, money, power: Junk. Right in the imperial vein.

Anyhow, I’ll aggregate reactions tomorrow. I gave the debate to Obama on points. Then again, Romney might have passed “the commander-in-chief test” for the tiny fraction of the voting population in the swing counties of swing states that hasn’t made up its collective mind. So Obama could win tonight’s debate on points and lose November’s election on votes. The Onion gets it right, as usual. Snippets will be abbreviated tonight, as I attempt to sleep without waking up screaming.

Walmart. Union: “Twenty-one individuals named in the suit [suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Chicago] allege that from early 2009 and continuing through today, Wal-Mart, Brookfield, Wis.-based QPS Employment Group Inc. and Labor Ready Midwest Inc., a division of Tacoma, Wash.-based True Blue Inc., failed to keep accurate records of workers’ time and provide workers with forms verifying hours worked, thereby making it ‘impossible for workers to make claims that they were not paid by the temp agencies for all of the hours they worked.’”

AK. Koch Brothers: “The [benefit] was to raise money to buy access to a new database sold by the reactionary Koch Brothers. The database actually marries church records and Internet shopping histories to better target voters likely to oppose — in the present case — the Alaska Senate Bipartisan Working Group. Minnery explained that this little invasion of privacy was for “the Glory of God and to get conservatives in power.”"